Jurors in the double murder trial of Aaron Hernandez on Monday viewed the 104-year-old gun that prosecutors say the former New England Patriots star used to kill two men in a drive-by shooting in Boston in 2012.
Prosecutor Patrick Haggan repeatedly held the .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver aloft for police witnesses to identify. The witnesses said investigators did not find Hernandez’s fingerprints or DNA on the gun, which was manufactured in 1913.
“It was touched by somebody, but that’s all I can say,’’ said State Police Trooper Steven Lord, who conducted a fingerprint analysis of the gun. He said usable fingerprints are found on only 3 to 5 percent of all guns tested.
Hernandez, 27, has pleaded not guilty to charges that he fatally shot Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado in Boston’s South End in the early morning hours of July 16, 2012.
The revolver that prosecutors say was used to shoot the men did not surface until nearly a year later, when Jailene Diaz-Ramos, a Bristol, Conn., woman with links to Hernandez, was involved in a three-car crash on the afternoon of June 21, 2013.
State Police found the revolver in the trunk of Diaz-Ramos’s vehicle, in a briefcase with three rounds of ammunition and some condoms, Trooper Paul Aten testified Monday. A locked safe was also found in the trunk, along with a BB gun inside the car, he said.
Boston police Detective Tyrone Camper, who works in the firearms analysis unit, later conducted tests of the revolver.
He said he determined with “a reasonable degree of ballistic certainty’’ that ammunition recovered from the scene of the double homicide was fired from the gun.
Linda Kenney Baden, a lawyer for Hernandez, noted during cross-examination that Camper determined during earlier testing in July 2012 that the ammunition could have come from a .38-caliber, 9-millimeter, or .357 handgun.
Camper said he narrowed his findings once he had a weapon to use for comparisons.
Prosecutors say Hernandez was riding in the front passenger seat of a Toyota 4Runner when he fired into the victims’ BMW at a stoplight. The defense claims the driver of the 4Runner, a marijuana dealer named Alexander Bradley, shot the victims over a drug deal.
On Monday, defense lawyer Kenney Baden asked Camper if he was aware that Bradley told authorities the shots that killed the men were fired from a .357.
Prosecutors objected to the question, and Judge Jeffrey Locke sustained the objection.
Hernandez is also charged with shooting Bradley in Florida in February 2013 in what prosecutors say was an effort to silence him about the South End killings.
Bradley, who is currently serving prison time for shooting up a Hartford club in 2014, is expected to testify against Hernandez for prosecutors under an immunity agreement.
Also Monday, jurors heard from Antwan Singleton, 32, of Bristol, Conn., a relative of the late Thaddeus “TL’’ Singleton, who married Hernandez’s cousin, Tanya. Police recovered the 4Runner from Tanya Singleton’s Bristol, Conn., home in June 2013.
Locke began the day by formally denying a defense motion for a mistrial, based on testimony last week from Raychides Gomes-Sanches, another occupant of the victims’ BMW, who said on the stand the killer looked “just like’’ Hernandez, “No doubt.’’ Locke wrote in a brief ruling that prosecutors did not “intentionally or improperly’’ elicit Gomes-Sanches’s statement. He also stressed to jurors last week that Gomes-Sanches did not identify Hernandez as the shooter.
Hernandez is already serving a life sentence for the June 2013 fatal shooting of Odin Lloyd. The state’s highest court will automatically review his first-degree murder conviction in that case at a later date.
Testimony in the double murder trial is delayed until Wednesday because of the expected snowstorm.
Travis Andersen can be reached at tandersen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @TAGlobe.
